Page 7 - Technical Manifesto of Futurist

Our straight line will be alive and palpitating; it will lend itself to the demands of the infinite

expressions of materials, and its fundamental, naked severity will express the severity of steel,
which characterizes the lines of modern machinery Finally, we can affirm that the sculptor must
not shrink from any means in order to obtain a reality. Nothing is more stupid than to fear to

deviate from the art we practice. There is neither painting, nor sculpture, nor music, nor poetry.
The only truth is creation. Consequently, if a sculptural composition needs a special rhythm of

movement to augment or contrast the fixed rhythm of the sculptural ensemble (necessity of the
work of art), then one could use a little motor which would provide a rhythmic movement adapted

to a given plane and a given line.

One must not forget that the tick-tock and the movement of the hands of a clock, the rise and

fall of a piston in its cylinder, the meshing and unmeshing of two gears with the continual
disappearance and reappearance of their little steel rectangles, the frenzy of a fly-wheel, the

whirl of a propeller, all these are plastic and pictorial elements of which Futurist sculptural
work must make use. For example: a valve opening and closing creates a rhythm as beautiful but

infinitely newer than that of a living eyelid.

Conclusions

The aim of sculpture is the abstract reconstruction of the planes and volumes which determine
form, not their figurative value.

One must abolish in sculpture, as in all the arts, the traditionally 'sublime' subject matter.

Sculpture cannot make its goal the episodic reconstruction of reality. It should use absolutely
all realities in order to reconquer the essential elements of plastic feeling. Consequently, the

Futurist sculptor perceives the body and its parts as plastic zones, and will introduce into the
sculptural composition planes of wood or metal, immobile or made to move, to embody an object;

spherical and hairy forms for heads of hair; half-circles of glass, if it is a question of a vase;
iron wires or trellises, to indicate an atmospheric plane, etc., etc.

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